This No-Knead Focaccia is Our #1 Recipe

[groovy upbeat music]

I'm Shilpa Uskokovic.

I'm in the BA Test Kitchen today,

and I'm here to show you the recipe for shockingly easy,

no-knead focaccia developed by Sarah Jampel.

It is our most popular recipe of all time.

It's really easy to understand

why this recipe is so popular.

One, it's focaccia,

which is perhaps the most satisfying bread

that you can ever make.

And second, it is just so shockingly easy.

Making this bread will make you seem

like an expert at bread baking.

[light upbeat music]

Focaccia is a yeasted bread,

and I have here in front of me active dry yeast.

If you only have instant yeast, I would 100% use that.

Yeast is what's responsible for making bread rise.

I'm going to bloom it with warm water,

around 90-ish degrees.

If the water is too hot, it will kill the yeast.

When you're using active dry yeast,

this is an important step.

By adding the warm water, we're just waking them up

and bringing them to life so they can strengthen

and make our focaccia very big and bubbly.

So now my yeast, I can tell, is bloomed

because it's foamy on top,

which is a reassuring sign that it is, in fact, alive

and it will, in fact, leaven my bread.

I'm gonna add a little bit of honey.

Sometimes sugar is used, and that is perfectly fine,

but honey has its own flavor characteristics,

which I think are really nice in this bread.

It provides a lot of energy to the yeast,

and it will also help the bread caramelize really nicely.

I'm going to whisk just to dissolve the honey

into the yeast mixture before I move on to making the dough.

[light jazz music]

In the bowl here, I have all-purpose flour,

and I'm gonna add my salt,

a very essential part of bread making.

It seasons your bread and makes it tasty.

It also tightens up the structure of the dough.

I'm going to dump in my bloomed yeast and honey mixture.

I'm also going to add the rest of my water.

There is a lot of water in this recipe,

and when you mix it, it is not going to resemble a dough

that you might be familiar with.

It will be very wet,

and that is a signature of no-knead bread.

Gluten is formed when flour interacts with water.

So by having a very wet dough,

you can make a strong end result

without much kneading at all.

As I'm mixing, what I'm paying attention to is just ensuring

there aren't any large dry streaks of flour.

This is what is called in bread-making terms

as a shaggy dough.

You can see that there are no dry streaks of flour.

There are no large clumps of flour,

and everything is moving as one nice mass,

but it's far from smooth, and that's okay.

The important thing here

is to make sure all of your flour is hydrated.

And the good news about this focaccia

is you're actually 90% of the way through

to making your final bread.

The hardest part of this recipe is actually done,

and now I'm ready to transfer it into a bowl with some oil.

I'm using olive oil to just grease the bowl.

And if you don't wanna get your hands dirty,

you can simply swirl the bowl to coat it in olive oil.

And then I'm going to use my spatula

to just dump this shaggy mass of dough into this oiled bowl.

You can see that it's laying on a pool of oil

and the top surface doesn't have any oil.

I'm simply going to turn this dough over

so it's coated even on the top.

Now I'm ready to cover the dough and let it rise.

It's important to keep the dough covered as it's rising

because you don't want the surface of the dough to dry out.

You can use a lid or a plate

or even a large rimmed baking sheet.

This is what we call in bread making

the bulk fermentation stage.

And the longer you can do your bulk fermentation,

usually the tastier the end result is.

I'm going to let this dough rise overnight in the fridge.

If you're short on time,

you can just rest it at room temp and let it rise.

It'll take maybe like four hours.

However, I do highly recommend resting it overnight

because I think it develops much better flavor that way.

She has risen!

Okay. Oh, wait.

Am I talking to the camera right now?

[laughs] You can go ahead. Okay.

You can see how it is increased in volume,

and you can see all of the bubbles forming around the edges.

That's the fun thing about using a glass bowl.

You can see all of the action of the yeast.

The next thing I'm going to do is perform

a series of stretch and folds where you're stretching,

and you're folding the dough over itself.

And every time I do that,

I'm going to turn the dough quarter of the way,

and then I'm going to repeat that motion.

As you keep doing,

the dough is going to get tighter and tighter,

but those are all good things.

So you can see I'm using two forks.

You really don't have to get your hands dirty at all.

And right before we put it in the pan

is when we perform this

just to build a tiny bit of structure

and help the focaccia rise upwards, not really outwards.

So I have over here a nine by 13.

You could use a bigger pan, like a half sheet tray,

if you want to make a focaccia that's larger but shallower.

I'm using a nine by 13

because I want a nice big fluffy focaccia.

I am using softened butter that I'm gonna use a pastry brush

to brush the butter everywhere.

It ensures your focaccia doesn't stick,

and the combination of the butter with the olive oil

makes the bottom of your focaccia particularly crispy.

Now that the pan is greased,

I'm gonna transfer the dough into the pan.

Boop!

Ooh, that was a very satisfying plop.

I am going to cover this right now

because I'm getting it ready for its final proof.

This is when it's going to build a lot of volume,

trap a lot of air.

Just as with the bulk fermentation stage,

it is important to cover the dough so it doesn't dry out.

The dough has been rising for about half the time.

I know it's going to need a little bit more time,

but I'm going to go in at this stage

and sort of help it along

by stretching it so it reaches the edges.

And this just sort of evens out the thickness.

I'm gonna cover this back up and let it continue to rise

until it doubles in volume.

[light mid-tempo music]

Guys, just look at the dough, how good it looks.

It's risen, it's filled the pan completely,

and it is extremely jiggly.

This is extremely satisfying.

Okay, just a few more seconds.

Before you bake, lightly dimple the dough.

You can see it's left an indentation

that's slowly filling back up.

That's the right stage to pop it in the oven.

This looks perfect to me, so I'm gonna go ahead and do

perhaps my most favorite part of the process,

which is dimpling the dough.

I'm going to grease my fingertips.

There are a few important reasons

why we're dimpling the dough.

Like, doing so creates and controls the rise

so it doesn't just blow up into one big mountain.

Traditionally, in some parts of Italy,

focaccia didn't always have salt in the dough itself,

and these dimples formed little depressions

for salted water that was poured on top

and then it would be caught in these pools,

and as it baked, it would evaporate,

and that would be the seasoning for the dough.

I make sure not to over-dimple

because then you're going to deflate all of that air

that you built up in the dough.

So don't go too crazy.

I'm going to drizzle it with olive oil on top.

I know the recipe says to use, like, a tablespoon,

but olive oil sometimes is like vanilla extract.

You don't measure those things;

just go for it, whatever your heart desires.

I'm going to finish it with a little bit of flaky salt.

I like to be generous.

That's the best part

when it falls into some of those dimples,

and it gets caught in a pool of oil.

Now that it's all dimpled, oiled, salted,

we're ready to bake this focaccia.

And it goes in at a very high temperature

because there is so much liquid in the dough.

It's gonna have this blast of heat,

and it's going to turn all of that water into steam

and just blow out your focaccia

in a really big, puffy thing.

[groovy upbeat music]

I know you guys can't smell it, which is unfortunate,

but it smells extremely good in here.

I'm gonna remove it from the oven right now.

Yum!

Oh, my God.

Look at this focaccia.

I can hear some of that sizzling fat at the bottom.

It's, like, crunchy and crispy.

It's, like, nice bubbles, and I'm very happy with it.

I think this would be excellent eaten as it is,

but I'm going to turn it up a notch.

So I have four tablespoons,

like a half stick of melted butter,

and I'm just going to grate fresh garlic in here.

I put the garlic in raw

because I knew it was gonna hit this hot bread

and sort of gently cook.

I love this recipe a lot,

but perhaps more than the recipe itself,

I think I love the recipe developer.

This was developed by my former colleague, Sarah Jampel.

I actually credit me being here in this kitchen to Sarah.

She's the one who reached out to me.

I started off as a freelancer,

and then I became a permanent partner of this kitchen.

So shout out to Sarah Jampel.

She is the very, very best,

and her recipe is the undefeated queen

of all the recipes that we ever put out at Bon Appetit.

[light groovy music]

I'm gonna pop this out onto the cutting board,

and because of all the greasing,

it is remarkably easy to get out of the pan.

You see all of these bits

where it touched the side of the pan

and the heat really got to it.

It's really nice and crispy and golden and crunchy.

You can see some of these micro bubbles on the surface.

That's a really good sign.

That means this is a well-fermented dough,

and there was a lot of air and volume trapped in,

and it's trapped forevermore in this bread.

I'm going to cut into this bread right away

because I can't help myself,

but if you were to eat it later, put a wire rack underneath

so it doesn't steam between the surface and the bread

and you lose all of those, like, crispy golden edges

that you worked hard for.

Okay, here we have it.

You can see this very plush and tender crumb in there.

You can see some bubbles, and then you can see the contrast

between the crusty exterior and the fluffy inside.

When you press down, the bread sort of just springs back,

and that's always a good sign.

Look at this part that's saturated with the olive oil.

I chose the corner piece

because, as with brownies, that is the best part.

You have that nice crispy edge.

Okay, let's bite into it.

[Focaccia crunching]

Mm!

I feel like I don't even have to speak

because you can hear that crunch.

There's just something about bread.

When it's homemade bread, it's even better.

And when it's so easy to make, it feels like the best bread

that ever possibly existed.

While this bread is fantastic just by itself,

I am going to showcase how versatile it is

by building a fabulous loaded sandwich with it.

[light groovy music]

I'm gonna slice this in half horizontally.

We're gonna treat it like you would a layer cake.

I'm going to call this a vaguely Italian sandwich.

It has pesto, Calabrian chili paste,

which I'm actually going to dilute with olive oil

so it isn't that strong.

Oh my God, this is, like, radioactive bread,

this Calabrian chili oil.

And I'm going to use an offset

to sort of spread this evenly.

This is my most favorite tool in the kitchen.

The open structure of a focaccia makes it perfect

for getting a bunch of, like, spreads and oils in there,

and they hide in all those nooks and crannies.

And I know when we get a bite of that,

it's going to be absolutely loaded with all of the flavors.

I'm going to add some stracciatella.

Stracciatella is essentially

like the inside of a ball of burrata.

That's all it is.

I love stracciatella in a focaccia.

It's kinda like a glue

that sort of holds all of the other elements together.

Then I have mortadella.

Oh, my God, such a good sandwich meat.

It's, like, fatty, salty, all of the things

that are a good building block for a sandwich.

When you add the mortadella, you sorta want to drape it

and not just, like, shingle it in a single layer.

It creates volume and air.

There's a very famous article by Helen Rosner,

which speaks about air being the most important ingredient

in a good sandwich.

There's some things that are, like, classics for a reason.

None of these ingredients are unexpected,

but they just work together, like the green of the pesto,

the pink mortadella, the Calabrian chili oil.

All of it is just so appetizing and enticing.

Give it a shower of pistachios

just to sort of pick up on the pistachios

that are already in the mortadella

and give it some texture and crunch.

I always like to say texture is my favorite flavor.

This is, like, one big plank,

and then you can cut it into pieces and portion it easily.

Okay, this looks spectacular.

You can see every single element,

and the ratio of topping to bread is just so intense

that it is, like, the best sandwich you've ever had.

Look!

I hope seeing this sandwich in all of its glory

is reason enough to convince you to make this focaccia

our most popular recipe of all time, for very good reason.